Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Balloons, signs, tears, and joy may not be unusual sights on military bases when family and friends await their returning veteran’s safe return home from a long deployment, but a wedding proposal by a boyfriend to his Marine boyfriend is. That’s what happened Tuesday at Camp Pendleton, when San Diego resident, Cory Huston, himself a Navy veteran once assigned to the Marines as a hospital corpsman asked Marine Avarice Guerrero to marry him. It is believed to be the first proposal of marriage and engagement between two gay men – not to mention two war vets – on a US military base. In an exclusive, San Diego LGBT Weekly was there to photograph the historic proposal.

April 24, under a bright Southern California sky at Camp Pendleton’s Camp Del Mar near Oceanside, Calif., a full two hours before his boyfriend’s return from the badlands of Afghanistan, Cory Huston waited nervously. Huston, who was discharged under the former Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, chain smoked as he rehearsed the simple proposal he would deliver when Guerrero would arrive.

He told LGBT Weekly that by popping the question, and assuming Guerrero would say yes, he would not only be changing his and his beau’s lives forever, but also the landscape of marriage among gay service-members.

“This is a huge step for me,” Huston said while pacing and scanning the crowd of fellow friends and family members of returning Marines.

Finally, luggage in tow, Guerrero emerged with a smile on his face. Upon seeing Huston, Guerrero dropped his bags; aimed a kiss toward Huston’s lips; and opened his arms to his boyfriends waiting embrace. The time and distance of 10 months’ separation evaporated in a public show of affection that less than a year ago would have been cause for court martial. After a few minutes of emotional holding and kissing, Huston went anxiously down on one knee; looked up at Guerrero, who was dressed from head to toe in military fatigues; and produced an engagement ring and the time-honored phrase, “Will you marry me?”

Huston’s mild tremble, a result of hours and days of anticipation about this day, was quickly quieted by the one word every hopeful fiancé wants to hear: “Yes.”

“I was blown away,” Guerrero said, staring at the shining ring on his finger shortly after the proposal. “I was shocked that after all we’d been through, he would honestly want to spend the rest of his life with someone like me.”

I've noticed of late there are a lot of full length films posted on YouTube... Did I miss something? I can't imagine the copyright owners permitting this. But, that aside, if you've never seen the British coming of age film, "Beautiful Thing" here is your chance.

It's absolutely one of my favorites in its genre. A same-gender love story that intersects with the discovery of self and acceptance, family and community, and the truth of one's own heart... Well worth the investment of 92 minutes.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

It's been a while since I posted what I've called "Profiles In Courage." For the most part, in the past in this feature, I've shared coming out stories. And remarkably, in just the last few years, "coming out" has become less of a shocking news event (for the rich and the famous, and the rest of us) and more of an acknowledgement that living the truth of your heart is the path to happiness and self-fulfillment (I know it has been for me!). So I've decided that it's time to recognize the people (some famous and some not) who have blazed the trail that SGL people can now in many places feel free to walk... These are the men and women who are the proof to the youth of today, that indeed, "It Gets Better."

And so, without further adieu, you're invited to learn more about one of our trailblazers. The photo above is of critically acclaimed writer, director, and actor of the stage and screen, Colman Domingo. Read more about Colman here.

This is the trailer for his highly acclaimed autobiographical, one-man stage play, "A Boy and His Soul"

Thursday, April 26, 2012

"Straight Americans need... an education of the heart and soul. They must understand - to begin with - how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul."

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Another awesome post from Johnny, the young man who so clearly knows and understands that "a life lived in fear is a life half-lived." He is absolutely an astonishing inspiration to me and countless other...

If I had had his courage and zest for life at his age, how many years of happiness might have been added to a life that knew so much misery, heartache and fear...

It does get better! And I am so happy that Johnny realized this and made it happen for himself so soon. And moreover, I am so thankful that he has so selflessly shared this most important of all truths with everyone else...

From a beautiful Tumbler blog entitled "The Gay Truth" by Johnny, where he posts some of the most awesome photos of himself and and the love of his life. Here is a young man who knows the power of truth and that "a life lived in fear is a life half-lived."

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

An Anglican priest has said the relationships between Jesus and his disciple John suggests he was gay, but that is is spiritually immaterial.

Writing in the Guardian, Paul Oestreicher, Canon Emeritus of Coventry Cathedral said the evidence for the biblical figure being “what we today call gay is very strong”.

Canon Oestreicher, whose parents fled Nazi Germany in 1938 for New Zealand and who was ordained a priest in London in 1960, was revisiting the message he had preached on Good Friday in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital.

He writes that John was the only male disciple to have come to Jesus’ execution and quoted: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple. ‘Behold your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”

Canon Oestreicher writes: “After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I felt I was left with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a century of my Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been homosexual.

“Had he been devoid of sexuality, he would not have been truly human. To believe that would be heretical.”

He continues that Jesus could have been straight, bisexual or gay, but the “homosexual option simply seems the most likely”.

In a modern reading of the Bible, he says: “The intimate relationship with the beloved disciple points in that direction. It would be so interpreted in any person today.

“Although there is no rabbinic tradition of celibacy, Jesus could well have chosen to refrain from sexual activity, whether he was gay or not. Many Christians will wish to assume it, but I see no theological need to. The physical expression of faithful love is godly. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a kind of puritanism that has long tainted the churches.”

He adds that addressing the issue on Good Friday was an “act of penitence for the suffering and persecution of homosexual people that still persists in many parts of the church”.

Acknowledging the view could be hurtful to the “theologically conservative or simply traditional”, he says it is spiritually “immaterial”.

If the Christian churches would “more openly accept, embrace and love” their gay and lesbian followers, he writes “there would be many more disciples”.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

By John Corvino, columnist, 365gay.com
05.13.2011
Many years ago, when I was about 10 years old, my father was driving me to school one day when a story came on the radio about a man convicted of abusing his own children.

I said something like “I can’t believe a father would do that to his own kids.”

“That man isn’t a father,” my Dad replied instantly. “Not a real one. It takes more than getting someone pregnant to make someone a father.” (He may have used more colorful language, possibly involving hand gestures.)

Dad was right, of course.

I’ve been reflecting on my father’s wisdom recently as I’ve been working through ideas from my last column, about the felt significance of biological connections.

I wrote that column while in Texas, helping my sister care for my five-month-old niece. Seeing my sister celebrate her first Mother’s Day was fascinating, not just because my niece is adorable (which she is) or because my sister and I are close (which we are), but because of something that, when spelled out on the page, admittedly sounds weird:

There’s something amazing about the fact that my niece’s body emerged from my sister’s body—which, in turn, emerged from the body of the same mother I emerged from, with the cooperation of our father, and so on up the chain.

That persons emerge bodily from other persons because of the bodily cooperation of still other persons is pretty cool—indeed, about as awe-inspiring as things get.

As I mentioned in the column, the fact that I find this phenomenon awe-inspiring doesn’t mean that everyone does, much less that its awesomeness is part of the objective furniture of the world. I’m sure that my amazement at such “simple facts” will strike some as evidence of my having too much time on my hands, the sort of thing that makes sense only to professional philosophers and heavy drug users.

But my point was that many people do in fact share awe at bodily connections. Whether because of evolutionary hardwiring or social conditioning or some complex combination of the two, biological bonds have widespread resonance.

Why bring up what seems to be an obvious point?

I bring it up because this “obvious” point is controversial. It’s controversial because it’s easily misread. So let me be clear:

To claim that biological bonds have widespread resonance DOES NOT MEAN that other bonds are less significant or less valuable. It certainly does not mean that non-biological parents aren’t “real” parents.

On the contrary, the claim explains why many adopted kids could have the most wonderful non-biological parents—as real as any family could possibly be—and still want to know their biological parents.

It’s not because their family is lacking in any way. It’s because, in addition to knowing their family, they also want to know the persons from whom they emerged bodily, the persons without whom they wouldn’t exist in the first place.

I’m reminded here of one donor-conceived adult I know, who speaks lovingly of her known family—her mother, her father, her stepfather and her grandparents—yet also longs to know her biological father. All three fathers are “real” to her, in different senses.

I grant that my friend’s longing, though common, is not universal, and that donor-conceived children may approach these issues differently in general than adopted children do. I want to honor her longing, even as I honor what’s unique and valuable about non-biological connections.

I don’t blame LGBT persons and their allies for being sensitive on these points. Our opponents use rhetoric about “real” families as a powerful weapon. Starting with a plausible premise about biological bonds, they then employ a breathtaking series of non-sequiturs to reach false conclusions about marriage and family.

It’s precisely because I want to block such moves that I think we should be clear-headed about the initial premises. Yes, these bodily connections are important to (many) people. No, it doesn’t follow that non-biological bonds are inferior, much less that same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

The child abuser described on that radio program may have been a “real” father biologically, but he certainly wasn’t a “real” father morally. A biological parent brings you into existence, but a moral parent sustains you in that existence.

I think bringing someone into existence is a pretty big deal—hence the last column. But like my own (biological and moral) father, I’m ultimately far more interested in what happens afterward.

********

John Corvino, Ph.D. is a writer, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. Read more at www.johncorvino.com.

********

Being an adoptive father myself, I know that it's true... Being a parent has nothing to do with who you love, but everything to do with if you know how to love.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

This lovely song speaks to the feeling in my heart as I think of my husband and the few men that have owned my heart both with him and before him. Love is such a magical and tragically ephemeral chain whose yet unbreakable bonds weave and wrap their way through every corner of every moment in our lives, if only we could fully realize the joys of being thus bound and inextricably linked one to another.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

I like Kirk Cameron, but he doesn't like us... So let's get this straight, hate is hate no matter how you wrap it up in pretty paper and declarations of freedom of speech and religious freedom. Words are powerful, words do hurt people and hateful words incites hate... Kirk, if you truly follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and thus claim to be a Christian, can you really imagine Him saying any of the things you've said...?

One of my favorite pastimes is to identify GLBT people depicted in films, articles and other media including historical works... In past posts, I've featured the story of President Lincoln and his beloved "friend," Joshua Speed and others. I'm thinking of making these a regular feature of the blog. Today's entry is fromThe Daily

The death toll from the Titanic’s sinking in 1912 included Butt and his lover, Frank Millet.

Maj. Archibald Butt, aide to President Taft.

The death toll from the Titanic’s sinking in 1912 included Butt and his lover, Frank Millet.

When the Titanic sank, Maj. Archibald Butt, a military adviser to President William Howard Taft and former aide-de-camp to his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, was among the heroes of the hour. Amid the disaster on the night of April 14-15, 1912, Butt fulfilled all the archetypes of manly courage, escorting women from their cabins to lifeboats, standing back to let them live and facing death with selflessness. One of the women he helped to save — he had known her when she gave music lessons to the Roosevelt children in the White House — later testified that after he helped her into the lifeboat, he tucked a blanket around her with careful nonchalance, as if she was going for a breezy ride in an open car.

Taft wept when it was confirmed that Butt was lost in the freezing Atlantic Ocean. Much of Washington grieved. In the press rooms of the White House and the War, State and Navy buildings, as one reporter wrote at the time, “the name of Maj. Archie Butt, once synonymous of laughter and jest, now symbolic of heroism, was repeated while eyes blurred and voices became queerly strained.” Ever since 1912, writers have depicted Butt as an archetypal Southerner and military officer. They have not noticed, or have shrunk from mentioning, that his was also love story, a story involving another man, Frank Millet.

Butt was born in Augusta, Ga., in 1865, shortly after the Confederate surrender in the Civil War, and he graduated from the University of the South in Tennessee. He was a Washington correspondent for Southern newspapers, fought overseas against the Spanish in Cuba and against rebels in the Philippines, and looked impressive in his spurs, plumed hat and ceremonial dress.

In his career as a presidential adviser, Butt proved indispensable to both Roosevelt and Taft. He liked to be useful, popular and amusing. He had a swelling sense of accomplishment when his White House arrangements, introductions and discreet advice went off perfectly, as they usually did. He misplayed shots in order to cheer up the golf-mad Taft when he was disheartened, laughed at his boss’ dull legal jokes, ate the heavy meals that the obese Taft liked (broiled chicken, hominy and melon for breakfast; fish chowder, mustard pickles, baked beans and brown bread for lunch), salved the dignity of visiting politicos who did not know how to eat artichokes or cucumbers, and mollified Taft when brats yelled “Hello, Fatty” at him.

Yet all the while, Butt shared a house in an old-fashioned district of Washington, D.C., with Millet, his devoted partner. Born in Mattapoisett, Mass., in 1846, Millet served as a drummer boy and surgical assistant with Union troops in the Civil War. After a shining career at Harvard, he became an international war correspondent before settling into a peaceable life as a painter. His friend Henry James, the novelist, wrote of Millet’s “magnificent manly self … irradiating beautiful gallantry.”

Photographs of Millet show a handsome gentleman with an unwavering look and a calm, determined manner with no fierceness or bravado.

“Millet, my artist friend who lives with me” was Butt’s designation for his companion. (Their only recorded quarrel was over Millet’s choice of decoration for their home. Butt complained that the wallpaper, crammed with red and pink roses, from buds to full-blown flowers, made him feel giddy.) They held great Washington parties. “People come early to my house and always stay late and seem merry while they are here,” Butt wrote. At his New Year’s Eve party — attended by Taft, Cabinet members, ambassadors, generals, Supreme Court judges and “the young fashionable crowd” — he served nothing more elaborate than 11 gallons of eggnog, whipped by his Filipino houseboys, with hot buttered biscuits and ham served by his black washerwoman.

The couple had a tenant in the house named Archie Clark Kerr, a high-spirited, mischievous young diplomat at the British Embassy. Kerr had been born in Australia, but had a stagey, flamboyant pride in his Scottish ancestry. He certainly opened Butt’s eyes about the Scottish hostility to underwear. “Did you know that the kilt is worn without any drawers? I never knew it before Archie Kerr came to live with me.” Thirty-five years later, Kerr (by then known as Lord Inverchapel) returned to Washington as British Ambassador and alarmed the prudes of the U.S. security services by going to stay in Eagle Grove, Iowa, with a strapping farm boy whom he had found waiting for a bus in Washington.

Everyone stared when Millet and Butt departed together for Italy in March 1912 aboard the steamship Berlin. Considering their impressive outfits, it was hard not to. Butt wore bright, copper-colored trousers with a matching Norfolk jacket, fastened by big ball-shaped buttons of red porcelain, a lavender tie, tall bay-wing collar, broad-brimmed hat, patent leather shoes with white tops, a bunch of lilies in his buttonhole and a cambric handkerchief tucked in his left sleeve. The two men returned home to America together, too. They had separate cabins on the Titanic, not least because of their abundant luggage: Butt boarded at Southampton, England, with seven trunks of clothes and holiday purchases.

After the last lifeboat had been lowered, and the liner was tilting and about to plunge to the bottom of the ocean, Butt was noticed standing to one side on the deck. Millet was not a famous or recognizable man. No one remembered seeing him. But it is unthinkable that he was not near Butt at the end. When there are calamitous accidents or natural disasters that grab the headlines, reporters always seize on tragic stories involving families torn apart — or holding together against great odds. But the experiences of gay people are often written out of the narrative.

The enduring partnership of Butt and Millet was an early case of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Washington insiders tried not to focus too closely on the men’s relationship, but they recognized their mutual affection. And they were together in death as in life. The memorial fountain erected in the Ellipse area of the President’s Park in Washington is called the Butt-Millet Fountain.

Richard Davenport-Hines is the author most recently of “Voyagers of the Titanic” (William Morrow).

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